Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

[stickdog99]

Wow, I learned a lot from that free exchange of ideas and evidence.

[8bitagent]

My top three creepy cogent Bush moments.

#1

"The hijackers were instruments of evil who died in vain. Behind them is a cult of evil that seeks to harm the innocent and thrives on human suffering. Theirs is the worst kind of cruelty, the cruelty that is fed, not weakened, by tears. Theirs is the worst kind of violence, pure malice while daring to claim the authority of God. We cannot fully understand the designs and power of evil; it is enough to know that evil, like a goodness, exists. And in the terrorists evil has found a willing servant." The cruelty that is "fed, not weakened, by tears

#2
"Are you prepared to Lose?" Dubya's response: *cackle laugh* (then gets real serious) No Im not gonna lose. I dont plan on losing. I have a vision for what I want to do for the country, see I know exactly where I want to leave*

#3 "order out of chaos"...oops!

8bit, that parody is FUCKING FANTASTIC!

Thanks. Lost a couple friends over posting it with some angry comments on facebook, but I leave no social satire untouched. Today I was at the grocery store and literally, most of the magazines and tabloids at the check out line featured "Jahar" with all sorts of Pariz Hilton/Gawker/TMZ styled 'inside scoops'. Im also spoofing the bizarre fact there's apparently an "al Qaeda" magazine to begin with.

[8bitagent]

Wow, I learned a lot from that free exchange of ideas and evidence.

I find the fact everyone is standing where people got blown up kind of disturbing.

Also by the day I get confused which al Qaeda is the good al Qaeda and which is the bad. Wait...Syria, Libya and Iranian attacks by al Qaeda=good. Ok...whew, I feel better now.

[seemslikeadream]

Investigators Obtain DNA From Widow of Bombing Suspect
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and SERGE F. KOVALESKI
Published: April 29, 2013


Federal authorities are closely scrutinizing the activities of the wife of the dead Boston Marathon bombing suspect in the days before and after the attacks.

The authorities are looking at a range of possibilities, two senior law enforcement officials said, including that she could have — wittingly or unwittingly — destroyed evidence, helped the bombers evade capture or even played a role in planning the attacks. As part of the investigation, F.B.I. agents are trying to determine whether female DNA found on a piece of a pressure cooker used as an explosive device in the attacks was from Katherine Russell, the wife of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the officials said.

One of the officials said that a fingerprint had also been found on a bomb fragment and that investigators had tried to collect DNA and fingerprint samples from several people whom the authorities are scrutinizing in addition to Ms. Russell.

Federal authorities took a sample of Ms. Russell’s DNA on Monday in Rhode Island, where she has been staying with her parents, the officials said.

Her lawyer, Amato A. DeLuca, has said that Ms. Russell was shocked when she learned that her husband and brother-in-law were suspected of involvement in the attack. “We want to state what we stated before: Katie continues to assist in the investigation in any way that she can,” he said Monday in an e-mail.

The focus on Ms. Russell is part of the wider effort by the F.B.I. to determine who else may have played a role aiding the bombers. While the authorities do not believe the bombers were tied to a larger terrorist network or had accomplices, they remain skeptical that others did not know of their plans or did not help them destroy evidence. A law enforcement official said that authorities were investigating individuals who may have helped the suspects in some way after the bombings. The official would not elaborate.

Ms. Russell, 24, grew up in North Kingston, R.I., and is the daughter of a physician. She met Mr. Tsarnaev at Suffolk University, her lawyer said. She converted to Islam and married him in 2010.

Mr. DeLuca has said that Ms. Russell does not speak Russian, so she could not always understand what her husband was saying.

On Monday, another lawyer was added to the defense team of the surviving bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19. Judy Clarke, one of the nation’s foremost experts in death penalty cases, took the case at the behest of Mr. Tsarnaev’s three federal public defenders.

Ms. Clarke’s past clients include Susan Smith, who was convicted of drowning her two children, Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber, and Jared Loughner, who killed six people at an event held by Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona. All avoided the death penalty and received life sentences instead.

“In light of the circumstances in this case, the defendant requires an attorney with more background, knowledge and experience in federal death penalty cases than that possessed by current counsel,” federal Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler wrote in her order appointing Ms. Clarke, who is based in San Diego.

[Simulist]

Hopefully, the underpaid clerk who placed Tamerlan's pressure cooker in the crummy Walmart bag at the point-of-sale won't be implicated in the plot.

[compared2what?]

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/minding_russia/2013/04/novaya-gazeta-finds-possible-ties-of-tsarnaev-to-extremist-underground-in-dagestan.html

The original and complete Novaya Gazeta article , from which the Telegraph and NY Times built their stories.

I found an inconsistency (what a shocker!) in this article:

It was determined that Tsarnaev came to Makhachkala at the end of January 2012 to see his father and to turn in his Russian passport. He didn’t have a return ticket. During his stay in Dagestan, Tamerlan lived in Makhachkala the entire time and only in March went for a brief period to the Chechen Republic to see his relatives in the Tsarnaevs’ native village of Chiri-Yurt

He couldn't have come to Makhachkala at the end of January 2012 to see his father because his father didn't live there until May!

And now the villain, aside from the two conveniently dead compatriots of Tamerlan's, is WAMY. Which is supposed to make us forget Misha, which is supposed to make us forget Uncle Ruslan. Not operating off their "A script"? You betcha!

If that's proof of one, it's also proof that neither the Times nor the Telegraph is following it. Because neither repeated the error.

It's also not really fair to say the Times based its story on that article. They cite other sources, say other stuff and are, in general, harumphily quasi-equivocal about the Novaya Gazeta material. (High-hatting because they can out of sheer resentment over having to credit another publication, not a reflection of belief one way or the other, if you ask me.)

The [i]Telegraph[/i story's just breathless repeating without question. qualification or care, though. Shameful.

[seemslikeadream]

Hopefully, the underpaid clerk who placed Tamerlan's pressure cooker in the crummy Walmart bag at the point-of-sale won't be implicated in the plot.

ya never know she may have heard something

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36324

[8bitagent]

female DNA

And prey tell, how does the FBI know the gender of the DNA in question? Or am I completely ignorant of modern forensic sciences?

[8bitagent]

If I may recap? Now that its been two weeks or so.

Two bombs go off in near succession at the Boston marathon finish line at 666 Boylston Street. 4/15. Patriots day. People speculate it may be
white milita member/s. Same week as other events like OKC, Waco, Columbine and VT Tech.
3 killed, over a hundred injured. The media reports an explosion or fire at the JFK library around the same time thinking
there is a connection, later reported to be unrelated

Immediately reddit, 4chan, etc is scanning through all the photos trying to identify possible suspects.
Circles are drawn around Craft security hat wearing guys, two Arab looking you in track suits, a Theodore Kazynski
looking guy and a guy with his pants blown off. Evidently none were involved(?)

The feds release scans of whom they say is the real culprits. Reddit and 4chan go wild with speculation its
the famous missing Brown U student Sunil Tripathi.

A Saudi student is taken in, red meat for right wing pundits. He's flown out on a "violation", unrelated...tho allegedly
a national security concern? Alleged stories of police motorcade at courthouse as well?

A couple days go by, and twitter/reddit/media/etc report police radio chatter about a 7/11 store being robbed and a shooting at MIT.
One cop down. Emphasis that they are unrelated by the media, yet the "conspiracy" folks online believe its connected

Then BAM! Holy shit...Michael Bay-esque crazyness. The Brothers Tsarnaev are leading cops on a wild chase while throwing explosives at them on the road in a carjacked vehicle.
They end up miles away in Waterton, using the SUV as cover as they shoot at cops and toss explosives. Some of it is live tweeted and caught on camera.
White guy in flack jacket seen alive with hands outstretched. Later a naked guy with oxygen mask is taken.
Then we hear Tamerlan ran at cops with a bomb vest shooting, was tackled. Jahar takes hold of SUV and rams through police cars, thus killing the brother allegedly.

A portion of Mass is put on what appears to be a militarized martial law lockdown. Door to door searches, military/swat/cops/fbi to the tune of 35,000.
It's official: The brothers are Chechen. Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother Dzokhar. Naturalized on September 11th

Jahar is found the next day sleeping in a boat in a backyard. Gunfire erupts, but it turns out he wasnt firing. Hes arrested, has bullet wounds everywhere. Cant speak conveniently
No miranda rights. No lawyer. Older brother was on the FBI radar after travelling to Dagestan.

Then we hear he is communicating: no wider plot. brothers radicalized themselves because of anti war views. Police say theres no wider accomplices.
Then they let leak they were radicalized by conspiracy theories, anti war beliefs AND ...al Qaeda magazine and Awlaki videos.

The Uncle says the boys were radicalized by losers, Uncle turns out to be once the live in son in law of top CIA/NSI head.

Sunil is found in the river around this time. Waco town blows up almost 20 years to the day after Waco, and 18 years after OKC(from fertilizer plant, used in OKC)

Ricin in mail suspect fingered, Syria accused of WMDs and a "red line" crossed.

And here we are. Post 9/11 hysteria and crazyness over a crude bomb that killed 3...that while horrific, seems to be latched onto as a political football by everyone.

Still...something is up with the story, I just dont know what it is. Nothing immediately jumps out even tho I realize most post 9/11 plots are FBI entrapments with informants...
am I missing anything?

[compared2what?]

If I may recap? Now that its been two weeks or so.

Two bombs go off in near succession at the Boston marathon finish line at 666 Boylston Street. 4/15. Patriots day. People speculate it may be
white milita member/s.

Guilty.

Still...something is up with the story, I just dont know what it is.

Agree.

The more I think about it, the less sense the Tamerlan-Tsarnaev I-went-to-Dagestan-and-all-I-got-was-this-lousy-radicalization part of it makes, though. Or maybe just the radicalization part of it. It doesn't explain the crime, unless you take it for granted that radicals indiscriminately bomb stuff for no discernible personal or political gain so routinely that the whole thing just explains itself parthenogenetically or something.

...

I don't know. Doesn't make sense. .

[hiddenite]

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/minding_russia/2013/04/novaya-gazeta-finds-possible-ties-of-tsarnaev-to-extremist-underground-in-dagestan.html

The original and complete Novaya Gazeta article , from which the Telegraph and NY Times built their stories.

I found an inconsistency (what a shocker!) in this article:

It was determined that Tsarnaev came to Makhachkala at the end of January 2012 to see his father and to turn in his Russian passport. He didn’t have a return ticket. During his stay in Dagestan, Tamerlan lived in Makhachkala the entire time and only in March went for a brief period to the Chechen Republic to see his relatives in the Tsarnaevs’ native village of Chiri-Yurt

He couldn't have come to Makhachkala at the end of January 2012 to see his father because his father didn't live there until May!

And now the villain, aside from the two conveniently dead compatriots of Tamerlan's, is WAMY. Which is supposed to make us forget Misha, which is supposed to make us forget Uncle Ruslan. Not operating off their "A script"? You betcha!

If that's proof of one, it's also proof that neither the Times nor the Telegraph is following it. Because neither repeated the error.

It's also not really fair to say the Times based its story on that article. They cite other sources, say other stuff and are, in general, harumphily quasi-equivocal about the Novaya Gazeta material. (High-hatting because they can out of sheer resentment over having to credit another publication, not a reflection of belief one way or the other, if you ask me.)

The [i]Telegraph[/i story's just breathless repeating without question. qualification or care, though. Shameful.

I agree, although I would like to point out I did not say "based" I said "built" ,. To me, that means the story from NV was an element used in the constructions of the 2 later stories.

[hiddenite]

If I may recap? Now that its been two weeks or so.

Two bombs go off in near succession at the Boston marathon finish line at 666 Boylston Street. 4/15. Patriots day. People speculate it may be
white milita member/s.

Guilty.

Still...something is up with the story, I just dont know what it is.

Agree.

The more I think about it, the less sense the Tamerlan-Tsarnaev I-went-to-Dagestan-and-all-I-got-was-this-lousy-radicalization part of it makes, though. Or maybe just the radicalization part of it. It doesn't explain the crime, unless you take it for granted that radicals indiscriminately bomb stuff for no discernible personal or political gain so routinely that the whole thing just explains itself parthenogenetically or something.

...

I don't know. Doesn't make sense. .

The lack of "discernible profit" bothers me too. Only with their capture/death did the Chechen connection imply any kind of motive. How "successful" is a bombing campaign in which no-one knows who did it or why ?

[8bitagent]

Aww...duh. I forgot the biggest whopper part of it all. They allegedly are suppose to be heading to Time Square with the rest of their bombs...but that plot is allegedly cooked up with the Chinese(but mistakenly white?)
"Danny" guy in the backseat of his carjacked vehicle.

But the kicker is, they do Boston. Then GO BACK to their day to day life. No big deal. Then, even when their faces are being sought by the FBI on tv, instead of saying "oh shit, time to get out of dodge" they end up back at MIT, shoot a cop dead for seemingly no reason. Carjack a vehicle then it's Grand Theft Auto Boston/Bad Boys 3. What's the plan here boys? Even Mcveigh was trying to quietly escape.

[beeline]

Haven't seen this posted yet:

Link


Report: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's repeated requests for a lawyer were ignored

There is zero legal or ethical justification for denying a suspect in custody this fundamental right

The initial debate over the treatment of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev focused on whether he should be advised of his Miranda rights or whether the "public safety exception" justified delaying it. In the wake of news reports that he had been Mirandized and would be charged in a federal court, I credited the Obama DOJ for handling the case reasonably well thus far. As it turns out, though, Tsarnaev wasn't Mirandized because the DOJ decided he should be. Instead, that happened only because a federal magistrate, on her own, scheduled a hospital-room hearing, interrupted the FBI's interrogation which had been proceeding at that point for a full 16 hours, and advised him of his right to remain silent and appointed him a lawyer. Since then, Tsarnaev ceased answering the FBI's questions.

But that controversy was merely about whether he would be advised of his Miranda rights. Now, the Los Angeles Times, almost in passing, reports something which, if true, would be a much more serious violation of core rights than delaying Miranda warnings - namely, that prior to the magistrate's visit to his hospital room, Tsarnaev had repeatedly asked for a lawyer, but the FBI simply ignored those requests, instead allowing the interagency High Value Detainee Interrogation Group to continue to interrogate him alone:


"Tsarnaev has not answered any questions since he was given a lawyer and told he has the right to remain silent by Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler on Monday, officials said.

"Until that point, Tsarnaev had been responding to the interagency High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, including admitting his role in the bombing, authorities said. A senior congressional aide said Tsarnaev had asked several times for a lawyer, but that request was ignored since he was being questioned under the public safety exemption to the Miranda rule."

Delaying Miranda warnings under the "public safety exception" - including under the Obama DOJ's radically expanded version of it - is one thing. But denying him the right to a lawyer after he repeatedly requests one is another thing entirely: as fundamental a violation of crucial guaranteed rights as can be imagined. As the lawyer bmaz comprehensively details in this excellent post, it is virtually unheard of for the "public safety" exception to be used to deny someone their right to a lawyer as opposed to delaying a Miranda warning (the only cases where this has been accepted were when "the intrusion into the constitutional right to counsel ... was so fleeting – in both it was no more than a question or two about a weapon on the premises of a search while the search warrant was actively being executed"). To ignore the repeated requests of someone in police custody for a lawyer, for hours and hours, is just inexcusable and legally baseless.

As law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky explained in the Los Angeles Times last week, the Obama DOJ was already abusing the "public safety" exception by using it to delay Miranda warnings for hours, long after virtually every public official expressly said that there were no more threats to the public safety. As he put it: "this exception does not apply here because there was no emergency threat facing law enforcement." Indeed, as I documented when this issue first arose, the Obama DOJ already unilaterally expanded this exception far beyond what the Supreme Court previously recognized by simply decreeing (in secret) that terrorism cases justify much greater delays in Mirandizing a suspect for reasons well beyond asking about public safety.

But that debate was merely about whether Tsarnaev would be advised of his rights. This is much more serious: if the LA Times report is true, then it means that the DOJ did not merely fail to advise him of his right to a lawyer but actively blocked him from exercising that right. This is a US citizen arrested for an alleged crime on US soil: there is no justification whatsoever for denying him his repeatedly exercised right to counsel. And there are ample and obvious dangers in letting the government do this. That's why Marcy Wheeler was arguing from the start that whether Tsarnaev would be promptly presented to a federal court - as both the Constitution and federal law requires - is more important than whether he is quickly Mirandized. Even worse, if the LA Times report is accurate, it means that the Miranda delay as well as the denial of his right to a lawyer would have continued even longer had the federal magistrate not basically barged into the interrogation to advise him of his rights.

I'd like to see more sources for this than a single anonymous Congressional aide, though the LA Times apparently concluded that this source's report was sufficiently reliable. The problem is that we're unlikely to get much transparency on this issue because to the extent that national politicians in Washington are complaining about Tsarnaev's treatment, their concern is that his rights were not abused even further:

"Lawmakers were told Tsarnaev had been questioned for 16 hours over two days. Injured in the throat, he was answering mostly in writing.

"'For those of us who think the public safety exemption properly applies here, there are legitimate questions about why he was [brought before a judge] when he was,' said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), a former federal prosecutor who serves on the House Intelligence Committee.

"Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the committee, wrote Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. asking for a full investigation of the matter, complaining that the court session 'cut off a lawful, ongoing FBI interview to collect public safety information.'"

So now the Washington "debate" is going to be whether (a) the Obama DOJ should have defied the efforts of the federal court to ensure Tsarnaev's rights were protected and instead just violated his rights for even longer than it did, or (b) the Obama DOJ violated his rights for a sufficient amount of time before "allowing" a judge into his hospital room. That it is wrong to take a severely injured 19-year-old US citizen and aggressively interrogate him in the hospital without Miranda rights, without a lawyer, and (if this report is true) actively denying him his repeatedly requested rights, won't even be part of that debate. As Dean Chemerinsky wrote:

"Throughout American history, whenever there has been a serious threat, people have proposed abridging civil liberties. When that has happened, it has never been shown to have made the country safer. These mistakes should not be repeated. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be investigated, prosecuted and tried in accord with the US Constitution."

There is no legal or ethical justification for refusing the request for someone in custody to have a lawyer present. If this report is true, what's most amazing is not that his core rights were so brazenly violated, but that so few people in Washington will care. They're too busy demanding that his rights should have been violated even further.
UPDATE

In March of last year, the New York Times' Editorial Page Editor, Andrew Rosenthal - writing under the headline "Liberty and Justice for Non-Muslims" - explained: "it's rarely acknowledged that the [9/11] attacks have also led to what's essentially a separate justice system for Muslims." Even if you're someone who has decided that you don't really care about (or will actively support) rights abridgments as long as they are applied to groups or individuals who you think deserve it, these violations always expand beyond their original application. If you cheer when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's right to counsel is denied, then you're enabling the institutionalization of that violation, and thus ensuring that you have no basis or ability to object when that right is denied to others whom you find more sympathetic (including yourself).
UPDATE II [Tues.]

For those who are still having trouble comprehending the point that objections to rights violations are not grounded in "concern over a murderer" but rather concern over what powers the government can exercise - just as objections to the US torture regime were not grounded in concern for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - perhaps the great American revolutionary Thomas Paine can explain the point, from his 1795 A Dissertation on the First Principles of Government:

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

That's the same principle that led then-lawyer-and-revolutionary John Adams to vigorously defend five British soldiers (of the hated occupying army) accused of one of the most notorious crimes of the revolutionary period: the 1770 murder of five colonists in Boston as part of the so-called Boston Massacre. As the ACLU explained, no lawyers were willing to represent the soldiers because "of the virulent anti-British sentiment in Boston" and "Adams later wrote that he risked infamy and even death, and incurred much popular suspicion and prejudice."

Ultimately, Adams called his defense of these soldiers "one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country." That's because Adams understood what Paine understood: if you permit the government to trample upon the basic rights of those whom you hate, then you're permitting the government to trample upon those rights in general, for everyone.

This is not a platitude they were invoking but an undeniable historical truth. Governments know that their best opportunity to institutionalize rights violations is when they can most easily manipulate the public into acquiescing to them by stoking public emotions of contempt against the individual target. For the reasons Paine and Adams explained, it is exactly in such cases - when public rage finds its most intense expression - when it is necessary to be most vigilant in defense of those rights.

[beeline]

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